


Ghosting

by orphan_account



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Choking, M/M, Nanobots, Robot Sex, edit: moira's dubiously ethical medical tech, gabe can't catch a break, i do plan on finishing this some day, mercy's dubiously ethical medical tech, old men talking about their feelings, r76-typical angst, robot intimacy, robot senses, their horrible divorce, unconventional ways of having sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 16:26:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10971000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Morrison was resurrected whole. Reyes wasn't.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired by soldier's new cyborg skin & theories about why reaper is like that. not nsfw yet, but it will be.
> 
> title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5xTiL32dPk).

He flees the battle limping. Scorching plasma projectiles sizzle past him in the rain. He can hear the hiss of heat and water, the electric-blue tang of ozone sharp in his nose, and it’s too much. Sensory overload and neural feedback.

He’s gravely wounded, chunks of his form peeling away and dissolving. He doesn’t bleed red anymore. He bleeds smoke, unless it’s raining. In the rain, he drips tar.

He claws through mud and slippery wet grass, up the hill overlooking the little town and the stormy ocean beyond. The stormlight casts everything in rich chiaroscuro, deep shadows and stark light. Bruise-dark clouds bleed into the ocean like paint. He doesn’t slow down until the gunfire and the extrasensory prickle of wireless communications fade beyond hearing. They’ll lose the town, but he’s too tired to care. Just another sacrifice.

He’s grateful for the storm. It’s a groundswell of meaningless white noise around him. In this age of information, it’s virtually impossible to find a quiet moment. So much noise, all of it laden with _meaning_.

Eventually he finds cover in an empty barn. The borders of his form are growing hazy; it’s a relief to drop to the floor, pooling like crude oil. Exhaustion takes over. He drifts in and out of consciousness.

Slowly, feelers extend into his environment, swelling as they come into contact with useable resources. Carbon and silicon. On a deeper level than conscious thought, he’s hyperaware of each discrete unit in the crystalline swarm that makes up his body. Nanobots feed him a steady stream of detailed information about his environment, his condition, the time it will take to run self-repair protocols and replenish the swarm to safe levels. His thoughts are slow and foggy. He hurts.

Being what he is – not quite organic, not quite machine – he walks a line between the limitations of a purely organic body and the strengths of a machine. His internal chronometer keeps precise track of the time, but time drips past slowly nonetheless. He feels displaced from it. The rain shows no sign of abating. His coat is saturated, water dripping from his hood and trickling down his mask. He’s sick to his core, overflowing with deep, savage bitterness that he was subject to _this_ while Morrison was resurrected whole.

His brain and much of his torso were left intact. Everything else was lost in the explosion or stripped away under Ziegler’s knife. After that, whatever remained of his original form was replaced over a period of aching years, much as bitter black grief crept through his soul. He’s a ghost, capable of dissolving like smoke or oozing like bitumen, tarry and viscous.

Hours pass. Periodically, he hears feathers rustling up in the rafters, and the scratch of claws on damp swollen wood. Pale, barred feathers are scattered across the floorboards. Barn owl, he notes with irony. Of course. He can’t catch a break from _symbolism_.

Night falls, and with it some prickle of an electromagnetic field against the very edge of his awareness. He sighs, a rasp in his throat, and pulls his form together as much as he can. Settles a shotgun across his lap. He doesn’t know if he _can_ die, per se, but it’s not in his nature to submit to fate.

The barn door opens a crack, letting in a gust of wind that stirs up the feathers. Rain spatters the dusty floorboards. He can _feel_ the presence as it pauses outside, every part of him buzzing in response to the threat.

“Steeling your nerve?” he calls mockingly. His voice is a ghastly croak. “Afraid you won’t be able to pull the trigger?”

It’s Morrison’s heavy tread that approaches, because Gabriel cannot catch a _break_ tonight. Morrison’s creased brow, Morrison’s gun aimed between his eyes.

“No,” he says, and how Gabriel _hates_ that voice. “Afraid it won’t put you down when I do.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's a lot to unpack between them.

“Take your mask off,” says Morrison. His voice is harsh. Uncompromising. “I want to see what’s become of you before I put you down.”

Gabriel grits his teeth. Tracks the tremor of Morrison’s gun. Is that a feature of age, or anticipation? “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

Some of the tension seems to drain out of Morrison’s stance. “You haven’t changed.”

Gabriel laughs bitterly. “Oh, you have no idea.”

Morrison drops to the floor beside Gabriel, stretching out his legs. He’s a heavy weight at Gabriel’s side, warm and solid. A vicious contrast. Gabriel is fraying, leaking radiation, toxic by his very nature.

This close, that electromagnetic hum drenches Gabriel, seeps into his bones. It’s like sitting at a computer. Morrison must have upgraded himself since the explosion – it’d explain how he’s still so spry for his age.

“Can’t bring yourself to kill me?” Gabriel asks, but there’s no bite to it. He’s too tired.

“I didn’t come after you to kill you,” Morrison says, voice deadpan and exhausted. His head thumps back against the wall.

Gabriel’s breath grates in his chest. “Didn’t think you were the sentimental type.”

“This isn’t about _sentiment_.”

“Then it’s about soothing your guilt.”

Morrison’s brow creases. “My guilt?”

“Your – _yes_ , your guilt,” Gabriel growls. He’s disbelieving – how can Morrison be so _blithe_? “Do you have any _idea_ -” He tears his mask off and throws it to the floor, scattering feathers. He knows what he must look like – exposed teeth, bloodshot eyes, smoke crawling over his skin as the nanobot swarm struggles to form some facsimile of a human face.

Morrison’s visor fixes on Gabriel’s face and he glares back. It’s impossible to discern any kind of expression behind that mask, but his field shivers against Gabriel’s, indicating something he can’t parse.

“What is that?” Gabriel snaps. “Got yourself some upgrades too?”

Morrison stares at him for a moment, then lifts his mask from his face. Metal glints at his temples, contacts for some sort of interfacing between the mask and his brain. His eyes are pale and dull. His face is bisected by scars. He looks old. He looks like Jack.

“We had an agreement,” he says, awkwardly, when Gabriel snorts. “What do you mean, upgrades?”

“I mean – I can _feel_ you. It’s like sitting next to a live wire.”

“Yeah,” says Morrison, “I could say the same about you.”

“You don’t know, do you?” he asks, vicious. “You have no idea what Ziegler did to me.”

“No. Not really.”

“Put your visor back on,” says Gabriel shortly. “I want you to see.”

He watches Morrison fit the visor back to his face, contacts snapping into place, the surface lighting up.

Gabriel extends a hand, allows Morrison a moment to take in the fingers tipped with metallic claws, and lets it unravel. His skin fractures and dissolves, coming apart into smoke.

“May I?” asks Morrison.

“Help yourself,” says Gabriel. How he hates him. How he wants him to suffer with the knowledge of what he’s caused.

Morrison tugs off a glove and flexes his fingers. Metal phalanges and joints padded with translucent silicone, exposing fine tendons and wiring. It’s so acutely different from what Gabriel is that it’s shocking.

“You’re not the only one who was hurt,” Morrison mutters roughly. He brushes a knuckle against the swarm. His electromagnetic field is enmeshed with Gabriel’s. Nanobots crawl over his hand, feeding information back to Gabriel about temperature, material, molecular structure. With a thought he could have the swarm turn on Morrison and _consume_ , eat away at the metal until he’s stripped bare.

But he doesn’t. Instead he explores, sending a thread of smoke crawling over Morrison’s hand and into his sleeve.

“How far does it go?”

“Pretty much my entire torso and lower body,” Morrison responds. “The explosion.”

Gabriel laughs. It tears his throat, but he’s used to that sort of pain. “I wonder why _you_ didn’t get the same treatment _I_ did.”

Morrison looks away. “They thought it would be better suited to the commander of Blackwatch.”

“They experimented on me. _You_ got a tried and tested procedure.”

“There was too much damage-”

“Bullshit,” says Gabriel venomously. “We both know _why_.”

Morrison doesn’t say anything. Gabriel tugs the nanobots away from him, allowing them to reform into something approximating a hand.

“Why did you come after me again?” he asks. “To reminisce? Because I’d rather you just put me out of my misery.”

Morrison’s face creases in a way that Gabriel can’t parse. “I don’t want that.”

Some horrible intuition stirs in Gabe’s gut. “Whatever was between us is over, _Jack_. You made that quite clear. We’re at _war_ , for fuck’s sake.”

Morrison’s expression – shocked, grieving – indicates that Gabriel hit his mark. He feels some grim satisfaction.

“You expected to hunt me down like a wounded deer and have some sort of _reconciliation_?” He spits the word like tar. “You’re more deluded than I thought. You’ve spent the last 12 hours shooting at me and killing my people.”

“Gabe,” says Jack, pain clear in his voice.

“Shut up.”

He does.

They sit in a silence that, while tense, isn’t as uncomfortable as it should have been. They’ve played this game enough. Things were sour for months before they fell apart.

Gabriel idly considers radioing for help and sending Jack running. Then again – it’s raining, and the barn is warm, and he doesn’t want to suffer the indignity of asking. They know the mission failed. They’ll be looking for him.

“What’s it like?” asks Jack roughly.

“What’s _what_ like?” Gabriel spits back.

“Being… you know.” He awkwardly gestures towards Gabriel’s entire body.

“It’s a nightmare that never ends,” says Gabriel sardonically. “What do you want me to say?”

Jack doesn’t say anything.

Gabriel relents. “I’m surviving.”

“I’m glad,” says Jack, and his earnestness makes Gabriel want to laugh.

“Still as naïve as the day we met, I see.”

Jack huffs out something like a laugh and runs a hand through his hair. “Maybe so.”

They sit in silence for a while longer, the rain drumming against the roof and dripping through the rafters. The owl is fluttering around somewhere up in the shadows.

“I missed you,” says Jack. There’s something soft and broken in his voice.

Gabriel punches him in the face.

Jack is stunned, taken by surprise, and Gabriel presses his advantage, straddling him and pinning him to the floor as blood trickles from his nose.

“You still bleed red,” growls Gabriel. His claws drag furrows through Jack’s jacket and scratch the metal of his chest. “Do you still breathe like a man, Jack? Or did they take that from you like they took it from me?”

He closes a hand around Jack’s throat, finding crucial pressure points over arteries, applying lethal force. Jack makes a choked noise. His fingertips scrape over Gabriel’s forearm – not smoky now, but as hard as steel. He thrashes, trying to throw Gabriel off, but he’s furious and relentless. Morrison _deserves_ this. It’s been too long coming.

“One chance,” he says, smoke roiling around him. He’s trembling with the effort of restraint. “One chance to change my mind.”

He loosens his grip enough to allow air to scrape from Jack’s throat.

And Jack says: “Please.”


End file.
